Associate Professor
Florian David
Phone: +46 (0)31 772 38 83
E-mail: davidfl [at] chalmers.se
Office: Room 2058 (Fysik Origo, Kemigården 1)
The focus of our research is in the field of Synthetic Biology/Medical Biotechnology for next generation drug discovery and production.
The goal is to further develop baker´s yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, as an advanced drug discovery and production platform.
Unlike standard high throughput compound screens, we are employing yeast itself to produce millions of different structures while simultaneously selecting for potent drug leads. The specific goal is to find and produce new drug modalities with tailored properties. Within our research we focus on the development of advanced synthetic biology tools like intracellular biosensors, enabling high throughput screening approaches.
A parallel focus is on optimizing yeast cell factories for production of certain target molecules. Fine tuning of gene expression, proteins and metabolism is needed to increase production capacities. For example, combining genetic libraries and metabolite responsive biosensors enables us to selectively screen for better performing production strains.
Developing a discovery and production pipeline for novel drug modalities will lead to a better understanding on underlying drug design principles and will enable cost-effective microbial production in the long-term.
